This being said lets talk about the progression system a little then how they tie into each other

If all types of Game play (combat, Survival, harvesting, discovery) offer different aspects of income (IE Suvival has the most Experience for example) then you force players who pvp to do PvE (or the other way around). For this reason i feel a split between equal income rates is the best. While there is no metric data (that i can present with credible research) to prove this, as a player i saw this in many games in the past.

It's important to understand which of the two it will be because it players a heavy role in the issue of the itemshop. having all of the Expressive forms equally rewarding allows players allows us to easily influence the economy as designers (because changing the base cost of the items will not/should not require any further modification from the income rates. This makes balancing the game significantly easier in terms of progression, and makes the optimization of income via the item shop much easier to manage.

With that being said lets assume that all aspects of game play are rewarding equally to a 15 minute play session with the following:

if the above is true then we have an equation for calculation of income.

This means that a player will obtain 2 basic booster packs, and 2 faction booster packs every 15 minutes. (assuming you make the change that i requested to make faction boosters cost reputation)

I don't know what your projected progression rates should be but with the current system (with above changes) seems to be around where it should be. I would even advocate for reducing the values by 50%. In general League of legends offers a level every 45-60 minutes.

We should talk about the crafting system shortly. As i feel a crafting system would massively influence the above progression speed, which could be deadly/fatal to the game and potentially the company. If you insist on putting a crafting system it, my recommendation is for you is to

- Apply the above changes
- Reduce the above values by 50%
- Use the crafting system to speed up the progression to a level where players are not complaining about "grind".

I would disagree, as the purpose of a game is to have interaction between players. You don't want to make it impossible to come back from a mistake, but you also want a mistake to be meaningful. I also feel like the game is plenty fast as is, as making it faster would take away from the strategy, and make a mistake, or a slightly slow internet connection, impossible to recover from. Either way, it allows for a much more satisfying and interactive game by allowing people to actually have games that go back and forth by their successes and mistakes.

We may not be able to predict the future, but we can certainly create it.

Where the hook of players is, is not on "grid". "griding" systems in the industry (Especially in the western world) are being extensively rejected, and overly done systems. For some reason the developers here are getting lazy because of bad metrics (where the orient is providing data that says extensive grinding is good, is in fact due to the economic issues in these countries and jobs involving the industry (like "gold farmers" who are playing for hours on end).

Thus, If we look at the two diametrically opposed data sources, and investigate the reasons b ehind them we learn the industry's player base in general is starting to take up arms against extensive grinding systems.

Additionally, "Customization" is immensely addictive. It's a positive experience that people desperately want to engage in on a normal bases. Some great examples of this are in games like Guild wars 2, where you can alter your armors color, and metrics show the insane amount of customization a single player does to his armor a day (On average changing it 4 times a day).

In star fall, the game could capitalize on this point which is proven through countless games and metrics (data), that the better road to take in starfall is not extensive grinding, is to engage the creative aspects of the player base to find and try new builds.This can only be done with access to significant amounts of modules.

Buying the Faction related items with faction boosters will in no way hurt the game, it may (or Will) even improve on it. Think of it like this..

How many players will get mad if they have to grind a week for 1 new item to be added to their mix?
How likely would a player quit of the above (grinding a week for 1 item) is true?
How likely would you retain a player with 10 modules, vs a player with 20 modules?

I think if you dwell on this for some time you will learn that more modules means more playing, Which is a great direction for the game, and is the solution to a major problem in freemium (or free to play) Games (Player retention rates).

it is very important to keep the grind at an acceptable level that is for sure. But a Faction system/war system does have to have some grind to make it meaningful. But we have to wait a while befor we can realy judge it. Once all the features are working and we get a test with the real values we can judge how good or bad the grind feels.
But a game doesnt need to be tailored to ur 15 minute rule to be succesful. Just take a look at the Moba genre, rarely do i see meaningful matches (championship etc) that last less then 30 minutes. And still its one of the most popular genre right now.
Especially the discovery mode and the bigger 5vs5 matches for the stations would feel stupid if they would be build to last only 15 minutes.

we're not talking about making grid for the faction system perse, we're talking about making the "general booster" have more of its "content" inside of "faction boosters". Actually, i really dislike "general boosters", i'd much rather have "Beam" "Shield" Etc, but i know this will make acquiring the goons to fast (unless you limit it with higher resource points).

It's a bit tricky, But i think that you should have higher chance to acquire items in general, and faster chance to acquire what you want from faction boosters, which cost slightly more. If that makes sense to you.

Basically what i am saying is If general has all module slots in it, then the following conditions must be true

- Eclipse (Beam Weapon+ Shields+ships in booster)
- Federation (Weapon+Armor+ Ship in booster)
- Deprived (Weapon+Regenerative Armor + Ships in booster)
- General Contains all of the above, but at a reduced rate to acquire the item you want (due only to the fact there is more items in the pool).

i do understand where u wanna go with this, but im not sure if we should focus this much on eclipse = beam weapons in boosters etc.
I know the faction leans towards those, but i think theres plenty of other ways to play it aswell.
i think that the current faction booster with only ships is actually pretty good for a new players to expand there fleet But i agree that the general booster is a bad option to get weapons etc.
Adding packs especially for Beam weapons etc is indeed a bit to much.
But Maybe they could add a Weapon booster and a Equiq/Armor etc. booster for the same price as the faction boosters To give players a better chance at getting what they look for the most.

I like the idea of having weapon and equipment/armor boosters, but I would like to see a better use for faction points. I think that buying faction boosters with faction points would give more meaning to them, as to me they felt rather useless is the last test.(I might just not have found a use for them, as the only things I could buy with them that I knew of was colonies, and planets I was already had colonies on them.

We may not be able to predict the future, but we can certainly create it.

yes i agree, faction reputation should have more use, either for the faction boosters or maybe the motherships themself could sell some more stuff in there shop.
Then again, we are playing with the boosted values for the test, we dont know how "rare" or Valueable faction reputation will be with the real values.